Shadow Boxing
by CoolBreeze1
Summary: Tag to Season 5's Whispers - what could be worse than fighting genetically mutated zombies? Sheppard and others find out after returning home to Atlantis. Shep whump!


**A/N: **This is a tag to Season 5's episode, Whispers, which I lost then found again. Enjoy!

**Shadow Boxing**

"So how long do you think you'll be in…in…what's that planet called again?" McKay asked, trailing both Sheppard and Beckett with his hands in his pockets.

"Fenil," Beckett huffed. He peeked over the edge of the box he was carrying as they approached the staircase, and stuck his toe out in a careful search for the first stair.

"That's…the place…with the blue pumpkins…right?" John asked, panting as he lugged Beckett's other two bags up to the first landing.

"Oh, yeah! The pumpkins that grew in the trees. I remember that place. Weirdest fruit ever."

John paused on the landing, throwing a look down at McKay and noting the physicist's empty hands. Beckett was stepping blindly up the stairs behind him, the oversized box in his arms completely blocking his view. John was ready to snap at McKay for not helping, but the short flight up the stairs with two very heavy bags had completely winded him.

_Ronon would kill me if he saw me now,_ John thought. He bent over to pick up the bags and continue the rest of the way up the stairs but ended up with his hands on his knees as the world suddenly tilted.

"Ummppfff!" Beckett grunted as he tripped on one of the bags John had dropped.

"What's the hold up, people?" McKay called.

John wanted to answer, he really did, but his chest was getting painfully tight. He brought an arm up to wipe away the sweat dripping off his forehead and grimaced at how badly his hand was shaking.

"Colonel? What's wrong?" Beckett was suddenly kneeling in front of him, one hand on John's shoulder.

"Can't…can't breathe—"

"What's wrong with you?" McKay's face suddenly appeared next to Beckett's. "You're all pale. Are you sick?"

John closed his eyes as he struggled to pull in enough oxygen. The ground had finally stopped spinning on him, but he still felt like he'd just run a marathon.

"Can you walk?" Beckett asked, the creases in his forehead pulling down in concern. John almost smiled at the look he recognized from so many times before. He'd missed Carson Beckett—a lot more than he'd ever admitted to himself. He pushed himself up until he was standing straight.

"Yeah, I got it."

McKay and Beckett each grabbed an arm and guided him the rest of the way up the stairs, leaving the doctor's bags on the landing. John would have shrugged them off, but he was feeling shakier and shakier with every step and allowed them to lead him down the hall.

They arrived in the infirmary almost before John even realized that was the direction they were heading, making him wonder if he'd passed out somewhere along the way. He was still on his feet, though—albeit leaning heavily on the two men on either side of him. He could fill his rib cage jerking under his shirt in quick, panting breaths.

"Him too? This is not a coincidence." Keller's voice cut through the muddled haze that had settled over John's mind, and he looked up to see the young doctor already attending to Major Teldy. Teldy looked as miserable as John felt, and she gave him a small smile before she dissolved into a hacking cough.

"Over here, Colonel," Beckett said, gently guiding him to the nearest bed.

"I want you to get examined as well, Carson," Keller called out.

"After I—"

Keller was already shaking her head. "Doctor Cole can examine Colonel Sheppard. I need you to let Nurse Thompson look at you."

Beckett nodded, squeezing John's shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. He stepped back as Cole moved in to take over, her stethoscope already moving toward John's chest.

"Breathe as normally as you can, Colonel," she said softly. John nodded, trying to swallow back some of his wheezing breaths.

"Is this contagious?" McKay had backed up to the far side of the infirmary after he'd released his hold on John.

"I don't know yet, but I'm willing to bet that whatever is going on has something to do with Zombie Planet," Keller answered.

"Zombie Fog," John muttered. He watched Keller flashing her penlight into Teldy's eyes and he grimaced in sympathy at the pained look on the major's face. Cole's stethoscope slid to the other side of his chest.

"Could be—maybe something you all inhaled."

John nodded. It made sense, at least as an initial theory, but he'd leave the actual detective work to the medical doctors. He focused on his own breathing for a minute and realized that he wasn't feeling nearly as out of breath as he had on the stairs. It was still too much of a struggle, though. He felt like a band was slowly tightening around his chest. Distantly, he overhead Keller calling Mehra in for another check-up, and something about sending a message to the SGC to follow up with Porter, who was Earth-side.

McKay continued to hover along the edges of the room. John watched him step forward tentatively toward Keller. "What can I do to help?" he finally asked.

Keller smiled in response, her face lighting up for a second before she turned toward the man with a stern look. "You could start by repairing the Ancient scanner."

"I told you I was working on it. It could take days to figure out what went wrong with that thing."

"Deep breath, Colonel," Cole said.

Whatever else McKay and Keller said to each other was lost at that point. John took a deep breath and instantly bent over in a coughing fit. He could vaguely feel Cole's hands supporting him. For a moment, he was lost in a roar of pounding blood, jerking coughs, and too little oxygen.

By the time it ended, sweat was dripping into his eyes and down the side of his face. His head was pounding and he could feel his chest heaving in time with every wheezing breath. Keller was suddenly standing next to Cole, talking to him, but he couldn't hold onto the sounds of the words long enough to make sense of what she was saying. His body was shaking in exhaustion, and he felt himself listing sideways.

"Easy, Colonel. We've got you," Cole said, her voice calm, confident, reassuring. John nodded, allowing the two doctors to guide him down until he was lying on his side on the bed.

OOOOOOOOOO

John opened his eyes to a dark room, twisting in the bed sheets as he struggled to find a more comfortable position. He was sweaty and achy and exhausted, but no matter how he turned, he could not find a comfortable position. He rubbed at his face, then scowled when that pulled painfully on the IV in his arm.

He hated being sick.

He looked around, but everyone else seemed to be sleeping quietly. The four of them had been put in isolation just in case they were contagious, but so far, no one else had gotten sick and no one seemed particularly worried about it. That, at least, was good news. Keller had tried to explain what they'd discovered so far, but John had tuned out most of the medical jargon.

The list of symptoms he understood all too well, however—signs of a respiratory infection, including fever, cough, headache, and muscle aches. He and Major Teldy were apparently the worst off, followed by Sergeant Mehra. Doctors Beckett and Porter were showing milder symptoms, but no one else had gotten sick. Keller had gone into a lot more detail that only Beckett had followed, but part of the tension oozed out of him when she explained that the blood tests had come back showing it likely wasn't contagious.

John shifted to his side, pulling in as deep a breath as he dared. His chest was still tight, muscles taut around his ribs, and he was increasingly sore from the coughing he couldn't seem to stop. Even now, he could feel the itchiness building up in his lungs.

He swallowed, desperate to work some moisture into the back of his throat. A glass of water sat on the nightstand next to the bed, but reaching it would require sitting up in bed, and he was too tired for that.

A headache pulsed behind his eyes, and John rolled onto his back. He was going to cough—he could feel it coming—but he stubbornly refused to give in to the urge. If he could just hold on a little longer…

His chest seized suddenly, and John's body convulsed at the onslaught of coughing that followed. So much for holding on. He gripped the railings on the bed as he struggled to pull air in between each reflexive, congested exhale. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed their discomfort, and his vision narrowed to one spot on the ceiling above him.

He was suffocating—a distant, frantic beeping seemed to echo his own panic. He couldn't breathe. He alternated between trying to hold his breath to stop the incessant coughing fit and gulping in as much oxygen as he could, but neither seemed to help. The coughs turned to choking as the congestion worked its way up his throat, and the choking turned to gagging.

John felt hands on his back lifting him up to a sitting position, and the sensation of drowning immediately began to ease. He released his grip on the bedrails to bring his hand to his mouth, as if that would calm his lungs down, but he could hardly sit up.

"Hold on, John. Help's coming," a soft voice spoke in his ear. When John swayed, the hands gripped him harder, keeping him upright.

"Can't…can't—br…brr…" John gasped. His chest continued to heave and spasm with every jerking cough, and black spots floated in front of his eyes.

"I know, lad." Beckett's face appeared in front of John as he spoke. Footsteps at the back of the room had his friend spinning around and yelling for help. "He can't breathe!"

"What happened?" Keller's voice floated over John. He could still feel Beckett holding him upright. Someone slipped a mask over his face and held it in place.

"Don't know. I was asleep when I heard him coughing like mad, and then his sats level started dropping and the alarms went off—"

The oxygen was helping. John breathed in as much as he could—the coughing jag finally seemed to be subsiding. He was still being held upright, and he felt himself sagging in exhaustion against two sets of hands. More people ran into the room, moving around the bed and fiddling with monitors, his IV, and the bed behind him. He vaguely heard Keller prodding Beckett back to bed, and then he was being leaned back onto a stack of pillows that left him sitting up almost straight.

Keller appeared in front of him, brushing damp, sweaty hair from his face. "We're going to leave you propped up. That will help you breathe easier, alright?"

John nodded. He'd finally stopped coughing, and for the moment, all he wanted to do was revel in the sweet oxygen filling his lungs. A nurse appeared on his other side, poking him in the ear with a thermometer. John blinked lazily at her as she worked. A damp cloth wiped the sweat from his face and neck. When it moved to his hands, he saw the nurse's look of surprise as she wiped the one he'd used to cover his mouth. A spot of red on the cloth was just visible in the folds as she whispered something to Keller.

John knew he should have been more worried than he was feeling at the moment. The mask was removed and a nasal cannula fitted under his nose. Keller urged him to go to sleep and then moved to the chart on the end of his bed. He heard her whispering to the nurse, words like "pneumonia" and "fever" and "blood" floated back, but he was too spent to react. In a small corner of his mind, he was growing more and more freaked out, but exhaustion blanketed over everything.

A slight movement at his side caused him to blink open tired eyes. Keller and the nurse were gone and the infirmary was dark and quiet again. John turned a heavy head toward the sound of fabric rustling next to him, and saw Carson Beckett settling in a chair next to him.

"Get some sleep, John. I'll be here," the Scotsman whispered.

John raised his eyebrows, knowing the man was supposed to be in bed himself. He wasn't as sick as John, but he was still not up to par.

Beckett waved off John's silent question. "I'm fine—just a head cold. Sleep, before I call in Keller with a sedative."

John smiled in response, his eyes already drooping closed. He lungs still burned with every inhale, and he cringed at the wheezing sound of his breathing, but the cough had died down for the moment. Hopefully, he'd be able to get a few hours of sleep in before the next coughing fit.

OOOOOOOOOO

"Hypersensitivity pneumonitis."

"What's that?"

"I'm sure she'll explain if you give her a chance."

"I'm not allowed to ask questions?"

"Maybe we should wait until the end of the explanation before we start asking questions."

"Well, then, explain. We're all anxiously awaiting here."

The voices, though whispered, floated through the isolation room, mixing with each other until they were indistinguishable. John cracked his eyes open to look at the group of people huddled in the far corner, near the door. Their heads were bent low, and the word _conspiracy_ flashed through his mind. He smiled at the thought.

"Not exactly quiet, are they?" Beckett whispered. He slipped out of the bed next to John's and padded over to his side.

John shook his head, smiling. He lifted his IV free arm to wipe the beads of sweat off his forehead before they dripped down into his eyes. His entire body felt clammy and grimy from the fever. Beckett reached out to lay the back of his hand across John's forehead and tsked at the heat emanating from his skin.

"Hypersensitivity pneumonitis is a form of pneumonia—basically an inflammation of the alveoli within the lung caused by hypersensitivity to inhaled organic dusts. It's different than bacterial or viral pneumonia, but the symptoms are similar."

The voices in the corner picked up again, and John and Beckett both grew still as they listened.

"So what does that mean?"

"McKay!"

"Sorry. You do know that the whole 'save your questions till the end' is stupid and not very effective—"

"Rodney…"

Next to him, Beckett chuckled. John could clearly hear the impatience in McKay's voice, as well as the exasperation in Ronon's. Keller was obviously one of the heads in the group, too. John waited for them to continue, and tried to guess who else was over there.

"Should we be eavesdropping like this?" Beckett asked quietly. He was sitting in the chair next to John's bed now.

"Have to," John whispered, careful not to irritate his throat and lungs. "No TV."

"Colonel Sheppard is the worst off—his fever has steadily gone up and his lungs have become more and more congested. We had to put him on oxygen support last night, and he's been a bit nauseous this morning. Major Teldy and Sergeant Mehra have also gotten worse, though not to the same extent as the Colonel. All of them are suffering from extreme fatigue, muscle aches, fever, cough, and loss of appetite."

John looked over at the beds on the far side of the room where Teldy and Mehra were. Teldy appeared to be asleep, but Mehra gave him a slight wave. She was obviously listening in on the conversation as well.

"Doctor Beckett is showing improvement, which is hopeful."

"We received word from the SGC that Doctor Porter is also recovering," another voice interrupted. It sounded like Woolsey. John glanced over at Beckett and saw his face light up at the mention of Porter.

"That's good news," Keller responded.

The conversation dropped in volume so that John couldn't quite make out what they were saying. He caught something about blood tests and chest X-rays and the Ancient scanner still being down, to which McKay loudly and clearly retorted that he was working on it. John thought he heard Teyla's voice in there at one point, and he wondered if she had her baby with her. It was rare to see her without the little guy these days when she was off duty.

He shivered slightly. The slight movement aggravated the ache in his joints and he grimaced in discomfort. He hadn't felt this sick in a long time.

"Can you see Teyla?" he asked. Beckett leaned forward a little. To John, it looked like he was trying to get a glimpse of the group without them noticing, and he realized it probably had something to do with not wanting to be caught out of bed again.

The voices continued to float toward them, but the group had moved a little farther away.

"Can't tell," Beckett answered, leaning back tiredly in his chair.

John coughed—a wet, slapping sound deep in his chest—and shivered again. He really hoped she didn't have Torren with her. Keller said they weren't contagious, but he wouldn't want to take the chance with such a tiny baby.

"You alright?" Beckett asked, laying his head across John's forehead again.

"Cc-coldd…sudden…suddenly…" John tried to twist onto his side, but he was still sitting up in the bed and ended up just leaning more on one shoulder. He tried to pull the thin sheet higher up on his chest. His body, covered in sweat from a fever that had been raging all morning, was shivering and shaking uncontrollably.

Beckett stood up, moving toward the group near the door and calling for Keller. Within seconds, the two doctors were back at his bedside. Keller smiled, but her eyes betrayed her concern.

"Colonel?"

"Cold," John mumbled.

"Alright." She sent Beckett to fetch some extra blankets while she examined her patient.

"Why…" John stuttered. The aches in his joints and muscles spread the more he shook. Even his hair hurt.

"It's just chills. Doctor Beckett will be back in a moment with a blanket."

John shook his head. That was not what he meant. Before he could ask again, he coughed then groaned at the pain that lanced through his ribs.

"I'm just going to take a quick listen here," Keller said. John closed his eyes as she pressed the stethoscope to his chest and listened to his fluid-filled lungs. After a few seconds, she pulled away and turned toward the monitor next to the bed.

"Why…am I…more sick?" John forced the words out, his voice hoarse and raspy.

Keller bit her lip as she contemplated the answer. "Well, it could be a combination of things. You were running around in that fog quite a bit, so maybe you inhaled more of it than the others."

John lifted his head to look over at Mehra and Teldy. They'd breathed in just as much of it as he had. Keller followed his eyes, seeming to guess the question he wanted to ask. "After you, those two are the sickest. I'm guessing Doctors Beckett and Porter ran around the least, so they're the least sick. Whatever was in that fog is causing an allergic reaction deep in your lungs, so it's also possible that you are simply more allergic to it than everyone else."

John let his head fall back on the pillow with a moan. He hated being sick. Hated being bedridden. Hated feeling sweaty and hot and cold and grimy and achy…

"Here you go, lad," Beckett said. He and Keller draped the blanket over John's shivering body and tucked it in around his shoulders.

John relaxed a little at the slight warmth that began to gather around him, but the chills lingered. Keller sent Beckett off to bed a few minutes later, and John let his eyes slide closed. He felt exhausted and wired at the same time.

A hand on his forehead jerked him awake from the light doze he'd just barely slipped into, and he saw Keller's worried face bending over him.

"Colonel, your sats are getting worse. I know you're tired, but we need to take you in for a chest CT and a lung biopsy to get a better idea of what's going on in there."

John was too tired to respond. The bed began moving a minute later. The heat he'd been so desperate for before was suddenly stifling, and he pushed the blanket away from his body. His chest was growing heavier too, and he coughed against the pressure, igniting throbbing muscles along his ribcage.

He really, really hated being sick.

OOOOOOOOOO

"I can't believe I'm being taken out by a damn disease."

John jerked awake at the sound of Sergeant Mehra's voice echoing in the isolation room. He looked over at her in the bed next to his and saw her pale face frowning at Teldy across the room.

"A disease! Why not a Wraith or even one of those Zombie People?"

It was just the three of them now. Beckett had been released shortly after John had returned from Keller's tests the day before. Another long night had passed, ending with a nurse being permanently assigned to John's bedside. Why were the nights always the worst? He'd passed out from coughing twice—the second time waking up to a ring of doctors and nurses moving frantically around him and panicked monitors blaring their alarms.

"You'll be fine, Sergeant," Teldy's tired voice answered.

"It's a damn disease! I should be out in the field kicking ass, not sitting here curled up in bed for days on end."

"Not our choice," John spoke up. His voice sounded weak, and he scowled at the way his chest shuddered with every painful breath.

"Exactly, sir. At least on my feet I'm making choices—run here, stand there, fight, don't fight."

John coughed. He wanted to reassure her, but he had no idea what to say. The nurse sitting next to him held a cup for him so he could take a sip and quench the fiery cough building up in his lungs. He nodded in relief as she pulled the cup away.

"Doctor Keller said you were getting better and should be out of here in another day or two," the nurse chimed in.

John watched the sergeant's face and recognized the look of scowling boredom. Beneath it all, she was terrified. He could feel the same fear hiding just below the surface in himself, but unlike Mehra, he wasn't getting better. He was getting worse.

"Just get some sleep, Dusty," Teldy snapped. The major was pale with dark circles under her eyes that made her look gaunt. John hadn't heard if she was getting better or not, but she wasn't propped up in a bed attached to every contraption the infirmary kept in stock, nor did she have her own personal nurse glued to her side.

John's nurse was moving around his bed again, pressing her stethoscope to his chest for the hundredth time that day. He closed his eyes in exhaustion wondering how much more of this he could take.

Sergeant Mehra eventually quieted down, and John finally slipped into a restless sleep. He woke periodically throughout the day to find various people sitting next to him—McKay, Beckett, Ronon, Teyla without her baby. They spoke softly and reassuringly, and John thought that maybe he answered back, but the fever left a haze over everything. His wakeful moments melded with strange, swirling dreams, leaving him confused as hell.

It wasn't until he felt his body being lifted up and dropped gently onto a different surface that he woke up again fully. He blinked up at the large, humming monstrosity that was the CT scanner. Keller stood next to him, adjusting the sheet around him.

"This won't take long, Colonel," she soothed.

John coughed and tried to push back the sensation of drowning away. It was much harder to breathe lying flat on his back, and John's arms flopped toward his chest.

"Try to lie still, sir." A nurse appeared where Keller had been just a second before. She pulled his arms back down to his sides as the machine around him began to hum in earnest. John closed his eyes and groaned, his body weak and heavy on the bed.

Time began to pass in snapshots of lucidity and consciousness. Every time John opened his eyes, he was somewhere different with someone else looking down on him. One blink, and he was lying on a bed sliding into the CT scanner. Another blink, and Keller was staring down at him in full surgical garb, walking and talking. The words were unintelligible, and the lights passing overhead were making John dizzy. He blinked again, and the anesthesiologist was pressing a mask over his face.

When his eyes finally opened and stayed opened, he was back in the isolation room. A sharp pain in the side of his chest jarred him awake, and he moaned at the intrusion. A chair creaked next to him, and Beckett leaned forward, grabbing John's limp hand in his.

"How are you feeling?"

John attempted to answer, but it came out as a groan. He was flat on his back again but, he realized belatedly, it was a little easier to breathe than it had before. His free arm fluttered toward the stabbing pain in the side of his chest.

"Careful," Beckett cautioned. The doctor looked fully recovered, and John frowned at the unfairness of life that still had him confined to bed. "You gave us quite a scare."

John looked over at the doctor in confusion. He wasn't quite ready to talk yet. Beckett seemed to catch on, however, and settled back in the chair. His face schooled into an expression of calm and reassurance, and John could almost see the technical medical lingo flying across his mind as he decided how to explain things to the patient. This was the Beckett John knew.

"Doctor Keller found a pleural empyema," Beckett began, then stopped at the immediate look of confusion on John's face. He took a deep breath, starting again.

"It's a collection of pus in your lungs, kind of like an abscess—although with some technical differences…" He shook his head, stopping again. John could feel his heart starting to pound, his emotions shifting from disgust to panic to fear.

Beckett glanced up at the monitor before continuing. "They had to insert a chest tube to drain the fluid from the empyema. So far, it's the only one they've found. I know that tube is painful, but it's working. You've got a low-grade fever hanging on, but your sats have improved greatly over the last few hours. McKay should have the scanner fixed later today, and then we can run a scan to make sure."

"Now he fixes it," John rasped, remembering the oppressiveness of the CT scanner.

"Go easy on him, lad. He's been working nonstop sense we all fell ill."

"Others okay?"

"Aye, they are. You're the last of Jennifer's patients, actually."

John nodded, relieved. Tension he hadn't even realized he'd been feeling oozed out of him. They'd gotten lucky this time around. He'd gotten lucky.

He shuddered suddenly at the realization of how close he'd come to losing the battle against this particular disease, and he remembered Sergeant Mehra's despondency of not being able to get out of bed and fight.

John coughed then moaned at the pain that pulled at his incision sight. The muscles in his ribs and stomach were still sore as well, and he imagined it would be awhile before they recovered. The nasal cannula, feeding him needed oxygen, was drying out his nose, and his gown was clinging to his sweaty body.

"Hate being sick," he muttered grumpily.

"I know, lad. Trust me—I know."

John nodded but couldn't shake the feeling of helplessness growing over him. Flat on his back again while who-knew-what ran around wreaking havoc on the galaxy.

"Hang in there, John. You'll be on your feet soon enough."

John looked up at Beckett in surprise, wondering for a moment if the doctor was now a mind-reader. Either the good doctor had developed some extra-sensory abilities over the last year, or John was being completely obvious.

"It's easy to fight zombies—you just pull the trigger or plant some C4. The enemy is right there in front of you."

John knew what Beckett was saying to him, and he tried not to act like he was listening too closely, but he found himself clinging to his words.

"Fighting disease—now that's a whole different world. It's harder and scarier for a lot of people, mostly because there's nothing tangible to aim at." Beckett stood up. "You'll beat it though. I knew you would. You never were one to give up."

"You read minds now, Carson?"

Beckett laughed. "No, I've just been your doctor for a long time."

"Yeah, you have," John smiled. "You still going to Fenil?"

Beckett sobered quickly. "Aye, but not for another few days. There are people out there who are just as sick as you have been because of my part in Michael's experiments."

John opened his mouth to retort, but the doctor cut him off with upheld hands. "I know you're going to tell me it's not my fault, and I hear what you're saying, but I need to do this. I need to do what I can to help those people."

What could he say to that? John nodded, understanding what drove the good doctor.

Beckett smiled in response and patted John's shoulder. "You up to some visitors?"

"Sure," he whispered. He was bone tired and knew it wouldn't be long before he let himself doze off, but he had a sneaking suspicion as to the identity of his "visitors." He could stay awake for them, at least for a few minutes. A moment later, familiar voices echoed across the room, and his team shuffled in.

"Are you asleep?" McKay asked, and John laughed as the man tried to duck the swatting hands of both Ronon and Teyla.

"I'm awake, guys. I'm awake."

END


End file.
